Humiliation is not, of course, unique to writers. However, the world of letters does seem to offer a near-perfect micro-climate for embarrassment and shame. There is something about the conjunction of high-mindedness and low income that is inherently comic; something about the very idea of deeply private thoughts -- carefully worked and honed into art over the years -- being presented to a public audience of dubious strangers, that strays perilously close to tragedy. These seventy contributions prove it is possible to reverse Auden's dictum: that art is born out of humiliation.

In these forty-two poems, Robin Robertson demonstrates an astonishing range of style and concerns, in a voice that is utterly original. Whether he is rendering a dramatic new version of Ovid ("The Flaying of Marsyas") or celebrating the ambiguous pleasures of food ("Artichoke"), Robertson's poetry is always lucid, sensuous, and compelling. These are poems that speak of the wounds of memory, the implacable coupling of desire and loss, the fugitive nature of things. Elegant and profound, A Painted Field has proved a stunning debut.

To "swither" means to suffer indecision or doubt, but there is no faltering in these poems; any uncertainty is not in the lines or the sounds or the images, but only in the themes of flux and change and transformation that thread their way through this powerful third collection. Robin Robertson has written a book of remarkable cohesion and range that calls on his knowledge of folklore and myth to fuse the old ways with the new. From raw, exposed poems about the end of childhood to erotically charged lyrics about the end of desire, from a brilliant retelling of the metamorphosis and death of...